Concepts

This section covers mental models for how Conduit handles DNS — the query path on the dataplane and where policy plugs in. Read these before diving into config field lists and runbooks; YAML syntax and operational detail are described in other sections.

Read in order:

1. Architecture and packet path — listeners, pipeline phases, transactions, runtime snapshot, and how a query reaches upstream and back
2. Runtime and concurrency — dataplane runtime models (sync / split_io), worker pools, the transaction slot pool, and graceful shutdown drain

Where next:

• Policy & routing — selectors, actions, pools, backend health, retries, and Rhai for rules (Rule Rhai)
• Rhai — Rhai for rules
• Observability — metrics, tracing, and event export
• Glossary — short definitions for terms used across the docs